(Acceptable Alone But Better) Together
by Kyuzzang
Summary: They weren't conventional by any means – it was Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, but there was something poetic and breathtaking about it. Snapshots of memories from seven years that contributed to the formation of something unconventional, unprecedented and utterly, inexplicably magical. A post-Hogwarts era Drarry with all the bells and whistles.
1. Part I

_Disclaimer: I only own the words written here and maybe a few OCs._

_**Warnings:** **Swearing, violence, bad writing, yada yada the usual**. Also please note that I'm super lazy and so if you squint there's probably a canonical error second line._

_PART I of a III PART series. Please keep in mind that these are simply snapshots of important moments and are therefore not the entire story per se. Also don't try to find any logical way to organize the timeline because really it just has no structure and the yearly indicators are only there so that there isn't any confusion about the speed of the progression._

* * *

**1999; 1 year after the war ended.**

.

**o.o.o.o**

.

Harry grimaced at the taste of straight bourbon sliding down his oesophagus. It wasn't hard to imagine where they'd gotten the idea of firewhiskey from.

"Another?" the bartender asked.

"Two," he said, because despite how terrible it tasted, it was alcohol and Harry didn't think he could bear another minute of the party without being moderately drunk. Besides, he'd already made his speech. All that was left was lumbering around pretending to be sociable until someone, usually Kingsley, said that it was fine to go home now.

_Keeping up appearances and_ _all_, Harry thought as he tipped his head back and cringed. The alcohol was at least not defective; he could feel the world tilting slightly, rearranging on a new axis, and his head was strangely heavier than before. Contrarily his body felt lighter, which made walking an interesting task.

After having a rather uninvolved conversation with a woman ("Marionet Ricksterbeak, please to meet you") that went along the lines of "Are you enjoying your evening?"-"The alcohol helps"-"Excuse me?"-"I said, being _drunk_ makes the evening tolerable, yes", Harry staggered off to where the bathrooms were approximately located.

He may have wandered into the kitchen briefly but that _wasn't_ his fault – the little knife and fork sign could have easily been misinterpreted as those cartoon men and women. The staff only sign was kind of hard to miss but Harry blamed that on the inebriation.

The floor was dark and marble, and Harry grinned stupidly and said into the emptiness "I wonder if it's so that they don't have to clean up the piss that spills."

He shrugged and started pulling his zipper down and was unprepared for the dignified response. "Yes, I'm sure that's why. Nothing to do with decoration or artistic sophistication."

Harry took a few dizzying seconds to sway towards the sound of the voice, and snorted when his eyes landed on Malfoy.

He finished pulling his zip down and with a rather unappealing expression, said "Sometimes things are for practicality and not just because they look fancy, Malfoy."

And then frowned at his own words and wondered how he'd managed to pull such a wordy response out of his drunk ass.

Malfoy sneered, "I suppose you're a prime example of that."

Harry looked up in the corner of his eyes and zipped his pants back up, trying to think about what Malfoy meant. By the time he'd realised it (washed his hands, drying them on a paper towel) and twisted around to snarl an angry response, Malfoy was already gone.

"Git," he muttered under his breath and staggered off to make some more pleasant conversation, feeling a tad bit more upbeat. Someone was patrolling around with a tray of mini treacle tarts and Harry made it his mission to find and destroy.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"Try not to get drunk at this one, huh Potter?"

Harry set his jaw and shot a glare at Malfoy, impeccable blue robes fluttering – _fluttering_ in the dull breeze. He looked down at his own and noticed that he'd torn the edge of it because it was too long on him.

"Shut up, Malfoy," Ron said from beside him and lead Harry by the elbow to the other end of the room.

Harry and Ron passed the training program to become Aurors in a quarter of the time it usually takes wizards to do so. He thinks this may have something to do with the fact that the two courses are "concealment and disguise" and "stealth and tracking".

Considering they'd infiltrated the ministry and spent a whole year hiding from Voldemort and the darkest of dark wizards, it wasn't all that surprising.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

When Harry moved into his desk in the Auror offices, everything was so surreal. He had a _desk_. He was an _Auror_, with Ron no less.

Nothing dampened his mood at all that day, except maybe discovering that Malfoy's office was one floor above him.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

**2000; 2 years after the war ended.**

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"Look, Potter, I need you to run these files down to Draco-"

"What!" Harry shouted, almost dropping the files that Kingsley's assistant had been stacking on his extended arms. She gave him a look that promised grave bodily injury and Harry just sighed.

"Why does he need them?" he asked, failing to keep the ten-year-old-pout out of his voice and off his face.

"It's about a new potion that Kingsley wants him to try and make," Brandy explained, and placed the last stack on his arm. They almost reached his nose.

"Any chance he won't be in his office?" Harry asked meekly.

"Not a single chance," she said and patted him on the arm patronizingly. "Don't drop any of them either; they need to be in this specific order."

"Okay," Harry grumbled resignedly and walked to the other end of the department for the elevator. When he was inside, he fiddled around a bit trying to press the button on it, but got it eventually, face strained.

He _hated_ visiting Malfoy's office (which was kind of incorrect because he'd done everything he could in the past year or so to avoid any kind of interaction at all, which included ever being in or near his office). This was just Hetcherson trying to get back at him for accidently submitting his last four reports a week later than the due date (and maybe another five or six before that, too, but who was even counting?).

He swallowed down his hatred and walked towards Malfoy's office, silently praying for the best. Malfoy was spiteful on a good day and utterly murderous on a bad one. Harry didn't want to be caught caught in the crossfire if he was angry (or, even worse, be the _reason_ behind his anger. That was a whole new level of dangerous).

The door was ajar when he reached it (which was good because he definitely couldn't coordinate his hands around to open it). He pushed through it and said "Look, Malfoy, I don't appreciate playing errand boy-"

He didn't get much farther than that, though, because he was shoved backwards by an unimaginable force and flung out of the office into the hallway. He laid, dazed, watching as the papers all fluttered about haphazardly, their meticulous order disrupted. Brandy was going to be pissed. Harry smelled a lot of unpaid overtime that, by extension, involved a lot of office work, coming his way.

"Potter!" Malfoy yelled angrily. Harry could picture his face, pinched into a snarl, his hair sticking up slightly with the emotion. He braced himself, eyes squeezed partially shut.

Malfoy leaned over him and pushed away the papers that had gathered on his face to glare directly at him. Harry thought he looked a little less nasty than he'd imagined, but still nasty nonetheless.

"What did you do that for?" he snapped, arms braced on his sides. Harry could see a vein practically pulsing in his forehead. Not good, he decided around a dry swallow.

Harry frowned and tried to move into a sitting position but his whole body ached and wouldn't listen to him. "What do you mean? You're the one that blasted me out of your office."

Malfoy shook his head. "Are you illiterate now as well as stupid? There was clearly a sign on the door." He indicated his hand towards it and Harry looked up and yeah, there was a sign on the door. It clearly said, in big block letters, 'DON'T TOUCH DOOR, VERBALLY KNOCK PLEASE'.

"Oh," Harry said, face completely blank. He then looked up at Malfoy who was looking down at him expectantly and said "oops?"

"Oops?" Malfoy repeated, slightly incredulous. "Oops doesn't fix the potion that I'd spent an entire week, day and night, making!"

Harry tried to sit up again but his whole body was tingling now. His frown deepened and he sighed and said "Look, I didn't read your stupid sign because I couldn't see past the stacks of paper I was holding. So, sorry about your potion but," he indicated himself with his head, "Faultless, really."

Malfoy looked like he wanted to kick Harry and probably would have if a few people hadn't stuck their heads out of their offices to see if everything was alright.

"Everything's fine," Malfoy said to a particular nosy head that was beginning to become a whole nosy _body_. At Malfoy's insistence, the nosy heads all popped back into their own rightful offices, and Harry was left alone with him in the hallway.

"Erm," Harry began a little bit uncertainly as he tried to get up again, "so, I was just wondering-"

"A whole week gone to waste," Malfoy muttered, pacing back and forth beside Harry, "Presley is going to be _furious_ when he finds out."

Which was a tad melodramatic because Presley had the emotional capacity of a piece of lettuce. One of the pyro office guys blew his desk up a few days before and Presley hadn't so much as blinked at it, just asked where the forms for claims on work-related damages were.

Harry rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket for his wand (Malfoy was clearly going to be no help at all and Harry still had a lot of things to do that day and lying on the floor wasn't one of them) except his hand didn't move at all.

He tried again and the tips of his fingers twitched. His forearm trembled and he struggled for a minute more before giving up with a suffering sigh.

Malfoy seemed to hear him because he stopped his feverish pacing and glanced down at Harry with a disgusted look.

"What are all these papers anyway?" he snapped, malice hardly subtle in his tone.

Harry turned his head to the side; it seemed to be the only body part capable of moving at that moment. Malfoy was tapping his foot incessantly beside Harry's head. "I dunno, information about some potion. In a specific order, I was told. So I guess you should probably hurry to collect them all and sort them."

Malfoy's eyes narrowed and he folded his arms across his chest, "Really, Potter? _I_ should hurry to order them?"

Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes a second time, determinedly trying to show that he was _not_ still 12 years old. "Well, I mean, I'd help but I'm kind of-"

"Useless? Hopeless? Inherently _clums-_"

"_Stuck on the ground_," Harry said loudly, frustration slipping through and colouring his tone.

Malfoy looked frozen for a second before he composed himself and nodded with a regal sort of grace. Harry kind of wanted to kick _him_.

"Yes, well, it _was_ a paralysis potion that I was working on."

"Oh, well," Harry started sarcastically, "then of course, I'm happy to lay here like a vegetable. Why didn't you say so sooner? A paralysis potion, that's just brilliant. How _blessed_ I am."

Harry blew a piece of paper away from his cheek angrily. The paper flew away from his face, did a loop in mid-air and then landed back on his cheek, the corner pressed painfully into it.

"That was disturbing to both watch and hear," Malfoy told him slowly, lip raised in the corner, disgruntled look on his face. "Please refrain from talking anymore, Potter. The potion will wear off in an hour orso. Someone in your department must be competent enough to wheel you back to your office."

"An hour _or so_?" Harry repeated with dismay. "What does _or so_ mean?"

Malfoy fluttered his hand through the air and shrugged a little, "It means _or so_. Now good day Potter, I have a thousand pieces of paper to pick up thanks to you. Try not to drool on any while you await your _carriage_."

Harry puffed his cheeks out and mentally crossed his arms, staring hard at the elevator doors as he tried to ignore absolutely everything Malfoy said or did. A while later one of the junior Aurors came in with a desk chair and helped Harry's paralysed body into it.

"If your tongue swells to twice its size," Malfoy began to shout out as Harry was wheeled towards the elevator, "then it's probably best to just ignore it."

Yeah, Harry was _never_ coming back to Malfoy's office again. He was making it an official rule or something, to make absolutely no contact with Malfoy from that point onwards.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"A _secret santa_?" Harry asked, almost a second too quick to be completely in-sync with everybody else in the whole department that had repeated Kingsley's troubling announcement.

"Yes," Kingsley said a bit tentatively, "I have been, er. _Informed_ that there needs to be a, er," he looked over to a ministry official who was standing in the far back, expression hostile, "a friendlier environment around here. So, secret Santa it is. Please hold your complaints, I _don't_ want to hear them."

Harry shook his head and pursed his lips. He was _not_ happy. Buying presents for people was _hard_ and now he was probably going to have to buy a present for someone who he didn't even know. How _ridiculous_, he thought grimly.

They were a friendly enough building. So, the Auror office wasn't on quite good terms with the Safety Regulation office. That was unavoidable; being an Auror involved a certain amount of risk and injury.

And, well, maybe they had pranked the SR office a few times. Harry himself had pretended to lose an arm once at Ron's insistences so that they could get a laugh out of seeing the panicked expression on a junior regulator's face.

_Maybe_ the pyro-kinetic office _also_ had a bit of an issue with the Auror office too, and _maybe_ they liked to take out their frustrations by filling desk drawers with firecrackers that turned the recipient's hair a vibrant colour (and sometimes melted a bit of skin off but hey, that was purely accidental).

And _perhaps_ Harry and Ron had jokingly begun to shout a prophecy when the department of mysteries officials were near, just to see the way they fumbled around and spluttered hurried instructions to one another.

Yeah, okay, they weren't a very friendly building, Harry conceded with a shrug.

"Please come see me before the end of the day to select a name," Kingsley told them all.

Maybe Secret Santa wasn't such a bad idea after all.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

Secret Santa was an _awful_ idea. Harry knew it was going to be terrible the moment he'd withdrawn his own name the first time. And the second time. Before withdrawing _Malfoy's_ name.

He'd then lunged across Kingsley's desk and tried to shove the slip of paper back into the hat, but Kingsley had been quicker.

So he'd dragged himself back over to his desk, pushed aside the report that was due _yesterday_ and stared at the slip of paper for the rest of his shift, glaring holes into it.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"Malfoy likes to look like a twat," Ron suggested, powder-pink robes pulled towards himself.

Harry frowned and considered it, but shook his head after a moment. "No, he'll slip something into my coffee if I give him something like that."

"How about this?" Hermione asked, shiny hand-painted tea-set held up.

Harry grimaced and shielded his eyes. "If I feel the need to protect my eyesight from the intensity of the colouring, then dignified _pure-blood_ Malfoy certainly won't like it."

The rest of the day continued much the same, until Harry just settled on buying him a new packet of shiny potion vials and a wristwatch that he liked for some reason. It was made of brown leather and the body of it was silver.

Harry wrapped them up crudely with wrapping paper when he got home and collapsed onto his bed, immensely thankful that it was less of an ordeal then he'd imagined.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

From his Secret Santa, Harry received a pair of socks emblazoned with snitches, a broom-management kit and the newest issue of Seeker Weekly. He was pretty happy with his haul, all things considered.

Ron received a knitted jumper (Harry laughed for hours about it afterwards).

Malfoy didn't come to the Christmas party, but when Harry accidently crossed paths with him a few days later on his way to get lunch, he noticed that Malfoy's wrist was not as bare as it usually was.

He couldn't help but smile smugly at that for the rest of the day.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

**2001; 3 years after the war ended.**

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

Harry hated doing coffee runs. Usually he would hide with his head ducked until someone else was picked to go, but that day he'd been too involved in a report, caught up in the words, and Spiels had tapped him on the shoulder and informed him that it was his turn.

It wasn't as though Harry didn't like drinking coffee either, because he was possibly addicted to the stuff.

It was just that he had to buy it for the whole _department _which was, like, twenty return trips. And honestly, he didn't care enough about the people in the Magical Artifacts office (who, seriously, spent all day literally just looking around at all the pretty objects, taking bets on which ones were cursed or not) to spend a half hour getting them all coffee.

It _also_ meant that he would need to break his golden rule and visit Malfoy in his office to deposit the coffee (because Malfoy could _smell_ the coffee from two floors away and he was like an angry tornado when he was neglected from the coffee-fest).

Which was just so not cool.

Nothing good ever came from breaking the rule, and nothing good _ever_ came from interacting with Malfoy.

"Please," he begged, hands wound in the front of Ron's shirt, "come on, I'll pick out flowers with Hermione for the wedding instead. I'll – I'll do your paperwork. Just give Malfoy his coffee, _please_."

"No," Ron said easily. Harry set his jaw and released his hands and twisted around to snatch back the coffee he'd just placed on Ron's desk.

"You don't get any coffee then," he said snidely.

Ron shrugged and grinned and said "It's worth it to see you ruin his paralysis potion again."

"Oh no," Harry wheeled around, eyes wide, "he's not making that one again, is he?"

"He's not making a potion," Padma said without making eye contact, voice tired and withdrawn; she'd been working a double shift that day. "He's just doing paperwork."

"Go and get 'em, mate," Ron encouraged and slapped him hard on the back towards the dreaded elevator.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"Malfoy?" Harry called out warily, despite the fact that the door was firmly shut and there was no signage around the exterior of the office. "Malfoy?" he repeated again when there was no response.

He shifted both Ron's and Malfoy's coffee to one hand and used the other to knock. "Malfoy?" he asked again, and waited quietly.

Then Malfoy's voice carried through the door, "Come in."

Harry opened the door slowly, the creak elongated around his hesitation. He angled his body away from the opening as he did so, until Malfoy shouted "Oh for Merlin's sake, just _open it_."

So Harry did, and took a step forward. His foot caught spectacularly on the rug, and he watched, almost detached, as Malfoy's coffee slipped from its shaky position clutched by the edge of his pinky and flew forwards.

It landed on Malfoy's desk and the lid flew across the paperwork, followed by all of the coffee.

It soaked straight into Malfoy's paperwork, leaving them a messy, brown lump.

Malfoy looked down dejectedly at the lump-that-was-formerly-paperwork and Harry was caught between a compulsion to run and hide, or beg and plead.

"Were you born with a syndrome?" Malfoy asked quietly. Harry would have preferred he yelled.

As it was, Harry just thrust Ron's coffee forwards, head down, and said rapidly "Here, coffee, terribly sorry, gotta go, urgent mission, bye!"

And then he was dashing down the hall towards the elevator quicker than he ever had, suddenly wishing he'd just been blown up by a paralysis potion instead.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"I don't hate him," Harry admitted, "I just – I think that nothing good ever comes from our paths crossing."

Hermione didn't press the issue any further than that.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

Maintaining The Rule (it deserved to be an actual title now, Harry decided) had become miraculously easier after that. News had spread of what had happened and instead of being laughed at, people had made a great effort to avoid any situation in which Harry might accidently come into contact with Malfoy.

It was great and all but he really needed to use the toilet and so _what_ if Malfoy was in there, screw The Rule, his bladder was about to _burst_. Besides, it had been two months since The Second Incident (which also deserved capitals because of how much gossip it was receiving) so how angry could Malfoy really be still?

He shoved past Raggard and ignored Malfoy's presence completely as he emptied his bladder, thankfully separated by four urinals between them.

"I think you owe me a bottle of expensive wine," Malfoy hummed in thought, and tossed his head to the side after a second to look at Harry.

Harry pursed his lips and considered it and then shrugged, "I'll buy you a cheap shot of firewhiskey."

He blinked slowly afterwards and wondered why he'd suggested that in the first place. There was a rule to uphold. He _had_ ruined what looked to be a _lot_ of paperwork though. And maybe Malfoy that was receiving free alcohol was more pleasant than Malfoy who had to work overtime.

Malfoy wasn't impressed, but he agreed regardless. "Anything to get rid of that _plebeian_ woman who keeps questioning me on my intentions when I move in the direction of the elevator. They think I'm going to maim you or something."

Harry chuckled and washed his hands and drew out a "Yeah."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. "You thought I would as well, didn't you?"

Harry kept his smile in place as he nodded, "Just a bit."

"You owe me two drinks now, Potter," he said and left the bathroom, his robes flourishing and sweeping gracefully around his legs as he exited.

Harry testingly kicked his legs up a bit to see if his own robe would do the same thing. He managed to catch the side of it on the sink, and dragged it back to his office pathetically with a large wet corner weighing it down.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"Hey," Harry said, slurred slightly as he pointed a finger into Malfoy's shoulder. "I said _one_ drink."

Malfoy sneered, except it was caught between a smile and a sneer. "_You_ ruined four weeks total of work."

Harry stared at the tip of Malfoy's nose, mouth partially open in thought for a moment. Then he nodded, "I did, I did," and dipped forward in his chair.

Malfoy caught him around the arms and hefted him back up.

"Are we drunk?" Harry asked.

"Don't be silly," Malfoy slurred, and upturned his nose, jaw raised high. "Pure-bloods do not get drunk."

"Okay," Harry said a bit foolishly and swirled his finger in a puddle of firewhiskey on the bench. "But I think we're _drunk_."

Malfoy's eyes glazed over slightly and then refocused with a raise of his eyebrow, "Perhaps."

"_You_ sound drunk," Harry continued, mind too slow to process Malfoy's words. "And you _look_ drunk too," he added for good measure, tipping his head toward Malfoy pointedly.

"Please, Potter," Malfoy said slowly, "if _anyone's_ drunk, it's _you_."

"_Prove_ it," Harry challenged stupidly, not even understanding his own words. But it didn't really matter, because Malfoy nodded in acceptance of the challenge.

"How many fin-fingers am I holding up?"

Harry peered closely at Malfoy's hand and then exaggeratedly raised his head to look at Malfoy's face. Malfoy was holding up exactly four fingers.

"Five," he said and then frowned and exclaimed, "_blast!_"

Malfoy sniggered and caught himself on the bench as he started to slip sideways. "_Told_ you."

Harry shook his head, "Your – your _big_ finger – yeah _that _one," he pointed to Malfoy's pointer, "counts as _two_ fingers."

Malfoy frowned confusedly at his hand and asked, "Why?"

Harry grinned broadly, his cheeks aching with the wideness of it. "Because it _does_."

All Harry remembered after that was vomiting, possibly into his own lap and maybe a bit into Malfoy's, and then being deposited back at his apartment and collapsing into bed. When he woke up the next morning he had a raging headache and someone had taken all of his vomit-covered clothes off of himself.

When he arrived at work in the evening for his shift, there was a hangover potion on his desk and a crudely drawn picture of himself with over-exaggerated glasses vomiting.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"I just _love_ this grand atrium," Mrs. Higgleforth – Haggleforth? Higglefarth? – said with a dreamy glance around the whole place.

Harry downed his fourth flute of champagne and grunted as he searched out another one of those waiters carrying the silver trays with his only reprieve on them.

"The chandeliers are just so _beautiful_," she said wondrously.

"Yeah, real piece of _beauty_," Harry spat as he grabbed two passing champagne flutes. Mrs Higglesomething didn't seem to hear him.

"Will you be making your speech soon, then? Oh, I _do_ hope so," she said, hands clasped together.

Harry choked around the mouthful of champagne he'd been sculling and stood frozen in place. A _speech_? No one had told him about that when they'd forced him into his dress robes and told him the evening was obligatory!

"Pardon me," he said, smile too wide as he patted Mrs Higglewhatever on the arm. The smile melted into a snarl (that Hermione would later tell him just looked like a pout) as he twisted around and sought out Kingsley.

Kingsley must have seen Harry stomping over with his arms flailing because he excused himself from his conversation and turned around.

"Ah, Harry. How are you enjoy-"

"A _speech_?" Harry whispered furiously, voice lowered into a more hushed tone so that only Kingsley and a waiter could hear him. "I didn't sign up for a speech."

Kingsley shrugged a little and gave him an innocent look, "Just a little one."

Harry gaped, "And you couldn't have told me about this _before_?"

"You're better under pressure," Kingsley told him plainly and clapped Harry on the shoulder like he was doing him a favour.

Harry stared dejectedly at the ground and then dragged himself over to the sitting area, the cushions warm and welcoming. Harry was too intoxicated to think about exactly what it was he was meant to even _say_ at such an event, and yet not intoxicated enough to quell the growing apprehension that public speaking incurred.

Wait, what was the event tonight even for?

"Blast," he said under his breath, and snatched a flute of champagne rather angrily from a passing waiter. He pulled it up towards his lips, but a pale hand stopped the movement and pulled the flute out of his hand easily.

"Hey," Harry said, "I was going to drink that, _Malfoy_."

Malfoy rolled his eyes and pressed a vial into Harry's still open and raised hand instead.

Harry frowned at it. "What's this?"

"Really, Potter?" Malfoy asked disappointedly.

Harry inspected the sloshy golden liquid, a slightly cloudy orange glow to it. "Paralysis potion?" he asked.

Malfoy exhaled in an exasperated sort of way and said "Yes, Potter. Paralysis potion," and then disappeared to the other side of the room to make pleasant conversation.

Harry considered his options. On one hand, it could actually _be_ a paralysis potion, in which case he'd be dismissed from making a speech, but would also be subjected to an astonishing amount of embarrassment.

On the other, it could be something much worse than a paralysis potion.

Well, Harry thought with a shrug, it _probably_ wouldn't kill him.

The potion was, in fact, a pepper-me-up potion that sobered him up instantly. Harry determinedly ignored Malfoy throughout his speech (and all eye contact with anyone, really).

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

**2002; 4 years after the war ended.**

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"A reunion?" Ron repeated. "As in, everyone from our year level, in one enclosed location."

Hermione rolled her eyes, "Yes, Ron. That's typically what a reunion entails."

Harry beamed at her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, "Well, I think it's a _brilliant_ idea. I hear Dean just got a job at that fancy new broom shop. D'you think he'll give us a discount?"

Hermione shoved his shoulder and stomped out of the room.

Ron frowned at Harry. "Good job, mate."

Harry scowled, "Shut up."

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"Oh, wow. And you just got married, did you say?" Hermione asked, nose wrinkled slightly. She was attempting to smile, at least.

"Just last week," Dixie repeated and leaned forward to press her lips to Seamus'.

Hermione turned her head away, eyebrows furrowed and lips crumpled in disgust.

"Well, at least she has a job," Harry tried to say around his cringe.

"She's four times his age," Hermione said mildly, hand pressed over her mouth. "I think the _at least_ should be that she's still alive."

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

Harry wasn't surprised that after an hour and a half of the _reunion_, he found himself sitting at the bar, nursing a firewhiskey in a big gulp. It wasn't that the party wasn't great, just that it wasn't, well, _good_.

Nobody seemed to have achieved anything worth talking about for longer than a couple of minutes and Harry was kind of disappointed that Dean hadn't, in fact, gotten a job at that fancy broom shop.

At least Malfoy hadn't shown up. Harry counted it as a win that, despite the fact that he had possibly ten layers of other people's sweat liberally coating his hand, he had managed to maintain The Rule.

Even if he did muse that the evening probably would have been a tad more entertaining if the snobbish blonde had been present.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"No," Harry said adamantly, "I won't go. I'm fine, just give me my wand. I can patch it up."

Ron held Harry's wand away, high up in the air where Harry couldn't reach due to the leg situation.

"Stop being a baby," Ron said, "you haven't blown up his office in over a year now."

Harry glared and crossed his arms over his chest, "I'm still not going."

The Rule needed to be upheld at all costs, did Ron not understand that?

Apparently not because he and two other Aurors on their team heaved him up and carried him from the elevator to Malfoy's office.

"Get off of me!" Harry said, struggling in their grip, "I'm _fine_."

"Your leg is _gone_!" Ron exclaimed.

Harry waved around the limb that he was holding in his arms and stuck his tongue out, "It's still here, _actually_."

"Yeah, _not_ connected to your body!"

Alright, so Ron did have a fair point there. But there were lots of other potion masters in the building besides Malfoy.

"None that are also fully certified medi-wizards," Ron grunted as he dragged Harry across the floor.

Harry dug the nails of his free hand into the carpet and tried to drag himself the other way. Dimly, he realised how ridiculous he was being. This was his _leg_. But Hetcherson had forced a pretty strong pain relieving potion down his throat, and he had an inkling that it was effecting the rational part of his brain.

"No!" Harry shouted, and tried to kick out at Ron with his stump. Ron squealed when the bloody mess came at him and released Harry quickly to stagger away from him.

"What's going on out here?" Malfoy said as he came out into the hallway from his office. He looked up at Ron, then dramatically down at Harry, then the dismembered limb he was carrying, and then finally, his stump of a leg.

"Oh my," he said with a sigh, expression tired.

"Bloody pyro department," Harry seethed under his breath as Ron dragged him into Malfoy's office.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

"Perhaps you should consider reading that safety manual they hand out to the prospecting recruits?" Malfoy said and slapped Harry on the sensitive red line where his now not-dismembered leg had been reattached only seconds before.

Harry grinned broadly, the extra-strength pain reliever still effective, and shrugged. He had too much brain fog to be cunning or witty then with Malfoy. Honestly, he just wanted to sleep.

Malfoy sighed and shoved Harry's leg off of his desk. "Yes, well, unless you have some coffee you'd like to spill on my paperwork, I'm kind of busy."

Harry didn't need to be told twice. He stumbled a little at first, leg tingling oddly, and may have knocked a couple of books off of Malfoy's bookshelf, but was soon back downstairs, sleeping on his desk.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

Burke, verb. 1: To suppress quietly or indirectly. 2: bypass, avoid.

"Look, mate," Ron said over his shoulder, "your calendar is describing you."

Harry scowled and flipped it shut, and when Malfoy skulked past his desk to speak to Kingsley, he quickly slid from his chair and folded himself underneath it.

He was not _burking_ Malfoy.

Just maintaining The Rule.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

Harry slipped out from his hiding place underneath a cracked and dirty mirror, launched himself through the air and shot a protego, all before Crandesko could even finish his spell.

Behind him, Malfoy fumbled with the stopper on a vial of Erumpent potion.

("We need somebody who knows what they are doing with the potions," Hetcherson had said, "and Draco Malfoy is the only potions master in the building that did moderately well in defence against the dark arts.")

He spread it out on the ground just as Hetcherson shouted for them to move. They ran just as Crandesko's associates filed into the building, and it was as they crossed the threshold out the backdoor that the upper floor exploded.

Malfoy tripped when the force sent him shooting forwards and Harry grabbed his arm and hauled him up to keep moving.

Ron flashed him a villainous grin. Harry immediately dropped Malfoy's arm and shot him a glare.

Nothing good ever came from breaking The Rule, he thought with a scowl.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

The television had broken an hour ago, his fridge was officially empty and he had absolutely nothing to do. It was only midday as well, on his first day off in a long time. Everyone else was working since it was a Tuesday so it wasn't as though he could ask people to go out for dinner or anything.

As it was, he was just about to stumble back to bed, when a body fell through his fireplace. Well, in a more elegant way, stepping out with ease, brushing off little bits of ash from his shoulders.

Harry's mouth dropped open. "Malfoy, what're you doing here?"

"You have a day off and I need help with something," Malfoy said quickly, adjusting his clothing. He looked Harry up and down and curled his lip. "Well, go on. Get dressed. We don't have all day."

Harry stood frozen for a second, just staring at Malfoy.

Malfoy glared, "Are you deaf?"

That seemed to break him from his shock because he threw a disgruntled look over his shoulder and moved towards his room to pull on some more appropriate clothing than just his boxers, all the while thinking _blast_ because he'd somehow managed to break The Rule in his underwear, halfway through slinking off to bed, on his day off.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

TBC


	2. Part II

"Oomph," Harry said when they landed, or rather, when Malfoy landed and Harry kind of fell out of the air twisted up on his side, a prickle bush breaking his fall.

Malfoy rolled his eyes and ignored Harry as he noisily extracted himself from the bush, which was just _so_ typical Malfoy behaviour. Harry could've broken something with Malfoy's rough apparating skills. Splinched his leg off or something, and the git didn't even care. He glared daggers into Malfoy's back and looked around apprehensively.

It didn't look like they were in London anymore. Probably not even in Britain. They looked like they were in the Amazon or something which was, well, kind of wickedly cool.

He wasn't going to tell Malfoy that, though. Besides, he had four kinds of insects crawling up the leg of his pants and so that took precedent.

After roughly one whole minute, though, it went from being wickedly cool to being kind of like a sauna and well, Harry was wearing a suit, so.

The place was extravagantly beautiful, which made up for the uncomfortable clothing situation a little bit at least. It was like a whole other world. The sun was brighter, the trees were warmer shades of colours, and the bugs were larger and brighter than any he'd ever seen before.

Harry leaned over to peer at one closely, its bright orange petals fluttering delicately.

"So why are we," Harry began to say, the _here _on the edge of his tongue, but something sharp and heavy landed into the side of his hip. He wheeled around, wand drawn, and shot a _Stupefy_ at the little creature that had attacked him. It flew backwards through the air, a lump of darkness.

Harry turned to Malfoy, eyes wide.

"Make yourself useful," Malfoy said distractedly, carefully feeling along the edge of a large pumpkin-looking plant.

Another little grumbling creature rolled out and rushed towards Malfoy, but Harry easily blasted it away before it came too close.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

**.**

The task was more arduous than Harry had imagined it being; they spent all day in the wherever-they-were, collecting samples of obscure plants and scrapings from the bark of trees and fungus from underneath leaves (at which point Harry had stopped asking what Malfoy was doing). And it seemed the jungle-place had an abundance of little, gnome-like creatures too because he was constantly having to fight them off.

By the time nightfall came, they were absolutely covered in dirt, and Harry had a sneaking suspicion that the odd rattle to his lungs was possibly also dirt. He'd even torn the bottom half of his best robe, so that it resembled a dirty, fraying cape.

Malfoy's robe was still as dignified as ever, pale lilac and _perfect_.

They hardly spoke as they worked, which was good because it meant that Harry could ignore Malfoy's presence completely and he didn't need to dwell on the fact that he'd so royally broken The Rule. The Rule probably wasn't even in existence anymore.

Did water still count as water when there was more solute than water particles?

"Supersaturation, and yes the water still exists," is what Hermione would've told him, but she wasn't there and so Harry came to the conclusion that no, the water did not still exist.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"Hey, why're we-"

"I'm too tired to make two stops," Malfoy said around a yawn, "so either take yourself home or sleep on the couch."

Harry stared for a few, dejected moments at Malfoy's couch, and then made a grumbling kind of tired noise in the back of his throat and all but fell forwards onto the couch. Malfoy threw a blanket at his back and Harry remained conscious for just long enough to pull it down over himself.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

It became somewhat of a regular thing after that. Kingsley had impressed upon Harry that he needed to take more regular days off, as he had a year's worth of holiday time accumulated, and Malfoy told him rather snappily that Harry lumbering around behind him while he did his job was a lot less uncomfortable than contracting Sermalitis or Hephratermis or whatever other disease he'd said from the pests that hindered his sample-taking.

Harry knew that if he didn't go along, the alternative was spending all day sleeping at home doing nothing.

And at the end of the day, when they were both covered in dirt and bugs and tree-fungus, Harry was always too tired to protest staying at Malfoy's house.

Besides, Malfoy had these candles that were perpetually lit and they made the house smell like strawberry and ginger and his own house smelled like stale cheese and dirty socks, so.

He wasn't really complaining, and Malfoy didn't actually act as horrible as he'd imagined he would (because mostly Malfoy just ignored his presence). Malfoy also had a fridge that was perpetually full of food, so that helped him accept the situation a little better.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

Ron shoved two coffee cups onto his desk (he was doing the coffee run that particular day) and said "One for you and one for Malfoy. Be a dear and give him his."

And then he dashed away before Harry could catch him, all flailing limbs and poking his tongue out over his shoulder. Harry hoped he _tripped_. He was _definitely_ going to be telling Hermione about the time Ron had gotten drunk and handsy at the Christmas party last year.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

When he knocked on Malfoy's office door it swung open from the force of it and Malfoy appeared to be on his lunch break.

Harry placed the coffee on his desk and drew the crappiest picture ever of Malfoy with a dark little creature biting his butt. And then he _might_ have broken Malfoy's tacky green lamp with his elbow when he stumbled around victoriously, but, whatever. The git deserved it.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"Oh, _honestly_," Malfoy said, tweezers poised in his hand above Harry's knee, "you managed to survive the cruciatus curse, but a little splinter is outside the realm of tolerance?"

Harry tried to kick out with his foot but Malfoy pressed it back down onto the ground. "That was a long time ago," Harry whinged, "and it's a _big_ splinter."

It was. It was a mutant splinter – surely it was a whole _pole_ that had jammed itself up into his knee. He'd be lucky if he got it out without ripping his whole knee cap out in the process.

"Well, suck it up," Malfoy said encouragingly, helpful as always, and then went back in with the tweezers. He got one good tug of the splinter before Harry shoved his shoulders back and away and then pulled his knee towards his chest to cradle it. The splinter was still rooted deeply into it.

"Don't you have numbing salve or _something_?" Harry asked desperately as Malfoy picked himself up off the ground.

"You used up the last bit when you stood on that rock and it went _into_ your foot!"

"Who doesn't restock their potions?" Harry moaned, "Aren't you a _potion master_ or something?"

Malfoy sighed exaggeratedly, drawing the breath out. "Just sit up, it'll only take a second. Why do you have to be so melodramatic about it?"

Harry warily extended his leg towards Malfoy and seethed, "Why don't you shove a pole into your knee and see how reluctant you are to let someone like _you_ – _ouch!"_

Malfoy held the, admittedly small, piece of timber in front of his eyes, inspecting it in the light. "Yes, well, not everything is such an ordeal, Potter."

"It hurt, okay?" Harry complained, "And maybe if these stupid forests weren't so _dangerous_-"

"Do you honestly think that all the rare ingredients would be _easy_ to find? That I could just pop around to the corner store and get them?"

Harry dragged himself onto the couch and shot Malfoy a withering look. "Probably can," he muttered under his breath. Malfoy ignored it.

"I don't have work tomorrow so don't be as excessively loud as you usually are in the mornings," Malfoy said as he shut the door of his bedroom.

The next morning, Harry broke two glasses, tipped three dining chairs, and shouted his destination into the fireplace, purely for the heck of it.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"I like your shirt," Jemima told him bright and early, her dimples extra-dimpled today.

Harry gave her a mutinous expression for being so _bright _when it was so _early_,grumbled something incoherent and staggered off to the nearest desk, hoping that it was his own.

It was Proudfoot's desk.

Proudfoot came in a few minutes late and agreed to let it slide that Harry had drooled all over his paperwork if Harry kept it to himself that he was late for his shift.

Harry included a condition that Proudfoot carry him back to his desk.

An hour into his shift, he awoke feeling more tired than when he'd stumbled into the building. They'd spent half the night fending off an attack from a forest full of Demiguises that seemed to think they were stealing trees or something (which was kind of true because Malfoy needed, like, a bucketful of tree bark).

He also noticed when he attempted to look studious and busy as Kingsley walked past that he was wearing Malfoy's shirt.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"Hey, how do you do that thing?" Harry asked suddenly.

Malfoy turned slowly, one eyebrow inching towards his hairline. "What thing?"

Harry kicked his legs out and his robe swung with it, deflated and inelegant. He frowned down at it. "That thing with your robe. Where it flutters and stuff."

"Try not stomping like a barbarian when you walk," Malfoy advised with a snort.

Harry crammed a treacle tart into his mouth and thought that it was probably a bit hopeless.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

They were running so late for work. It was _Malfoy's_ fault. He _always_ set an alarm for them when they had work the next morning. Granted, they'd gotten back later than usual, more disoriented than ever, but the point remained.

Harry quickly cast a cleaning charm on his clothes and dressed as Malfoy hurriedly made breakfast. Breakfast consisted of a cup of juice and dried toast that Harry scarfed down without chewing and was still in the process swallowing when Malfoy pulled him through the fireplace.

They landed in a tired tangle of limbs in the lobby of the building, but they were _just on time_. If Harry hadn't been choking on his breakfast, he'd have cheered victoriously. Also, the fact that everyone in the whole entire ministry had just witnessed their clumsy arrival made sensibility kind of necessary.

Harry helped Malfoy up, and Malfoy bashed him on the back when he was standing to dislodge the clump of orange-juice-bread stuck in his oesophagus.

Ron gave him odd looks for the rest of the day that Harry pointedly ignored.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"Oh, hey," Harry said happily as he watched Malfoy spoon food onto his plate. Malfoy hadn't woken him up at some ungodly hour that morning and they hadn't faced an attack from any petulant creatures, so the atmosphere was more companionable than most nights. Also, Malfoy had the tendency to cook for three or four people rather than just himself, so Harry had told him plainly that he wanted food. "You're wearing that watch I gave you."

Malfoy looked down at his arm in surprise and flexed his wrist around the brown-leather watch. "I got this from a Secret Santa," he explained, brushing Harry off.

Harry grinned widely and caught the reflection of it in his glass. "Yup."

Malfoy smirked after a few seconds and tossed his hair to the side as he sat. "I should've known. Practicality over fanciness."

Harry chewed while he grinned and pointed his fork at him.

"So you admit I was right then?"

"Just eat before I change my mind about feeding you, Potter," Malfoy ordered, but his eyes were crinkled in the corners with laughter.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

**2003; 5 years after the war**

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"Five years," Harry said pensively when they returned back to Malfoy's house, just as he flopped back onto the couch, sucking on the wrist of his arm where he'd cut it on the protruding bark of a tree.

"Hmm?" Malfoy paused, two vials of mystery-scrapings clattering together loudly in his fingers.

"Oh." He hadn't meant to say it out loud. He waved a hand vaguely and continued. "Five years since we were at Hogwarts together."

_Fighting on opposite sides_ remained unspoken but they both thought it.

Malfoy sighed shortly and inclined his head, "To five years of moderate peace and only mild bouts of stupidity on your part, then."

Harry sat up and held his arm out over the edge of the couch and opened his mouth to ask if Malfoy had any healing salve, when a jar of it was flung into his lap. He rubbed it slowly into the scratches along his forearm and then stared across the back of the couch at Malfoy's bedroom door. It was made of some expensive wood, French or Italian or Spanish or something, and was a dark cherry red. The slippery material of the couch bunched up in his fist as a wave of memories flooded his head.

Six years ago Harry had almost killed Malfoy in a bathroom over _nothing_ and now, Harry was pulling Malfoy's blanket over himself and Malfoy was sticking his head back out of his cherry-red door saying good-night and everything felt so natural that it was weird to think that they'd ever been anything less than this.

Harry spent most of the night staring up at the roof, pondering.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"You know, it doesn't even look that bad, really," Harry lied, and tilted his head to the side to look at it from another angle. "I mean, if you squint and tilt, it's not even very noticeable at all."

"You're an awful liar," Malfoy spat stubbornly.

"I swear," Harry lied again, though his voice sounded slightly more sincere this time. And it wasn't really _that_ noticeable. Only if you, you know, _looked_. He sighed. "Don't you have a potion or something for this?"

Malfoy nodded and Harry leaned forward expectantly. "Except it's at the office."

Harry sighed and flopped back into a chair. He tried not to let his eyes wander to the egg-shaped bruise forming in the middle of Malfoy's head, and instead looked around his house. It looked the same as usual.

Except that Malfoy looked more miserable than he usually did. Which made his surroundings dreary to look at.

Harry grunted and nodded and heaved himself out of the chair. "Alright, I'll go get it from your office then."

Malfoy looked up sharply, except there was something akin to happiness dancing in his eyes. "Really?"

"Yes," Harry said calmly, a grin flickering, "you're moping is giving me a headache."

Malfoy smiled, wide and curved, and Harry had to double-take because it was the first time he'd ever seen him smile like that. It was so genuine and breath-taking. Usually Harry only got grins and smirks.

It was probably a result of the head-injury. Yeah. Malfoy was just being all weird because he was concussed. That was it.

He left before Malfoy could catch him staring and _might_ have knocked over a whole row of potions in Malfoy's office, but hey, he got the bruise salve, so Malfoy could just deal with it.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"So what's the deal with you and Malfoy?" Ron asked as he sat on the edge of Harry's desk, right on top of the stack of papers Harry was working from.

Harry looked up sternly at him and rolled his eyes.

"Nothing, we're just," _friends_ he wondered about saying, but it seemed weird. "Working together on a project."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," Harry said, "now will you move? You're crushing all my paperwork."

Ron held his hands up as he backed away slowly and Harry snatched the papers away with a scowl.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

Hermione stacked four sandwiches on top of each other and attempted to cut them so that they were all symmetrical. It sounded good in theory, but in reality she was using a butter knife and so the jammy insides squelched out over the crusts and the stack was condensed to half its size.

"You should've just used a cutting spell," Ron said over her shoulder, and Hermione raised the jam-covered butter knife threateningly. Ron grabbed a squished half and shoved it into his mouth. "I mean, you cut them perfectly. Who needs cutting spells?"

Hermione turned to Harry and her hostile expression faded into a smile. "Hungry?" she asked.

Harry looked at the messy cake of bread and jam and said "That's alright. Tea would be great, though."

It was his day off and so he'd decided to spend it with Ron and Hermione.

Not really, though, because he was injured and so without Malfoy to suck up his free time, and his television still broken, he'd decided that seeing them was the only productive way to spend the day.

To Ron and Hermione, though, it was a friendly desire to have lunch and catch up. Harry wasn't going to rain on that parade.

"So, how's the leg?" Ron asked around a mouthful of food. "Been massaging twice daily like you're meant to?"

Nope. He'd massaged it once testingly and then decided that his leg was better off without it.

"Sure I have," he said and waggled a finger, "twice daily. I'm all about listening to the medi-wizard."

"Has Malfoy made any of those potions?"

Harry choked a bit on a mouthful of tea. "What? Malfoy? Huh?" And it came out all warbled and rushed and panicked sounding. Blast.

"Easy, mate," Ron said, lip raised in confusion, "I mean the new batch of extra-strength healing potions Hetcherson said he was making."

"Oh," Harry said and took a sip of tea too quickly so that it scalded the back of his mouth. Curses, why was he acting so weird? "Why would I know anything about it?"

Hermione gave him a weird look as she settled into a chair across from him, Rose babbling on her knee.

"You spend a lot of time with him lately," Ron said nonchalantly. Harry was surprised that there wasn't any suspicion or accusation in his tone. That was alright, Harry was acting irrational enough for the three of them. Four, even.

He turned his head away, "I don't spend that much time with him. And I don't have a clue about his potions. Maybe you should ask him?"

Ron looked curiously at Harry and Harry felt like such an idiot. "Er, okay," Ron said, "fine, I'll ask him tomorrow."

And Rose said "Ga, ooh, ma!"

Hermione's cooing and fawning was enough to distract them all mildly from the current topic of digest, thankfully.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

The next day at work, Malfoy slouched over the front of his desk and shoved a pair of crutches at him. Harry took them questioningly, and Malfoy explained "You're clumsy enough without being injured. I don't want to imagine the pandemonium you might cause staggering around as you are."

Afterwards, Harry crutch-walked up to Malfoy's office and they both sat around eating the food that Malfoy had brought with him for lunch.

Harry tried not to think too long and hard about the fact that Malfoy had packed enough for two, and then tried doubly as hard not to dwell on the fact that yeah, he spent a lot of time with Malfoy.

More, even, than he did with Ron.

More than he did with anyone else, really. And he wasn't even sure if they were classified as friends. They still bickered and when they ate it was mostly silent and when Harry knocked Malfoy's glass coffee table over with the leg of his crutch when it'd gotten stuck and he'd panicked and tugged sharply on it, Malfoy still yelled at him and called him an oaf and asked if he was maybe suffering from an illness.

The only difference was that Harry just grinned at him and clumsily cast reparo on the shattered table and then Malfoy scowled and handed him a jar of extra-strength healing salve and yeah, maybe they were friends.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

Harry had planned on approaching the topic carefully. He really had. He'd thought long and hard about it for an entire month. He'd rehearsed conversations, thought about wordsy speeches, planned for every single response that Malfoy could throw at him.

So, short of writing a pathetic, long-winded speech about friendship and dependency and change and how they weren't at Hogwarts anymore, Harry had planned what he was going to say.

He really, _really_ had.

What happened instead was that he'd shot an auguamenti at a flaming salamander, and it had just kind of spurted from his mouth. Uncontrollable. He'd spat it out at Malfoy like his mouth had grown a brain of its own and then detached itself from Harry's functioning one.

"Are we friends?" he'd said, almost shouted because his mouth didn't understand volume control or subtlety. The forest had been really dark, but not so dark that he couldn't see Malfoy's face, a pale sliver of luminous white.

Malfoy probably raised an eyebrow questioningly, but the forest wasn't _so_ light that he could see that much detail. The seconds ticked on like a hammer on a nail and Harry hoped – prayed, even – that a salamander would come and attack him, just to make the awkward moment end.

And then Malfoy said "Friends?" and Harry shrugged, a jerky raise of his shoulders, and said, "Yeah, friends. I mean, it's been a whole year now, and. Y'know?"

Malfoy frowned like no, he didn't know, but he raised a shoulder elegantly and turned back to what he was doing. "I guess, yeah."

Harry beamed widely but it was lost on Malfoy who still had his back turned, hunched over the dying root of a large tree.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"Here," Harry said, warily moving towards Malfoy's desk despite the fact that he was simply doing paperwork. Even the sight of Malfoy's paperwork was enough to make him grimace in remembered fear.

Malfoy looked up out the corner of his eye as Harry placed a cup of coffee on his desk.

"You aren't doing the coffee rounds today, though," Malfoy said gently, mouth upturned.

"You're doing a double shift and I could vicariously feel your fatigue?"

Malfoy hid his smirk behind the nozzle of the cup but Harry could still make it out and it made him oddly happy, a bubbling warmth in his stomach that wouldn't abate even in the face of Hetcherson yelling at him.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

Harry smothered a yawn with the back of his fist and refrained from resting his head on the table. Falling asleep in a meeting would be _so_ not cool for his performance evaluation.

Ron nudged their shoulders together. "Why are you more tired after a day off than before it?"

Harry muttered something, he wasn't even sure what, and then stared at Kingsley for the rest of the meeting, paying no attention whatsoever to anything that was being communicated.

When he got back to his desk there was a pepper-me-up potion (he recognized the golden, shimmery liquid this time around) sitting unobtrusively upon a stack of paperwork.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"Happy Birthday, Potter," Malfoy's voice drifted through his dream, and through the siren of the quidditch game, he slowly began to fall out of the air. His broom fell away and the ground rushed up to meet his face, the world blurring around him.

Harry's head shot up from his desk so fast that he almost head-butted Malfoy on the way up. Malfoy reeled backwards, eyes wide. Harry scratched his head a bit sheepishly and said "Just resting my eyes, I swear."

And then he realised where he was and looked around in panic to see if anyone else had caught him sleeping.

"They have," Malfoy informed him, "everyone witnessed you drool on your paperwork. I think there are a few photographs as well. Left you to sleep out of courtesy, considering it's your _birthday _and all."

Realisation dawned and Harry made an 'o' shape with his mouth. "It's my birthday today," he said slowly.

Malfoy made a face at him. "You didn't know it was your birthday today?"

Harry wrinkled his nose, "Well it's just another day, isn't it?"

Malfoy went to speak but his face melted into a horrified expression and he said, "Oh no."

"What?" Harry asked in panic, looking around nervously, "wha-" and then he saw Ron and Kingsley and, well, practically the whole department moving towards him with a cake in their hands.

The candles on the cake were shaped as a 2 and a 4 and his name was written in bright green on top. They sung Happy Birthday especially loud, practically screaming the last verse at him, and then Ron announced that it was time for "birthday punches" and continued on to hit the living daylights out of his bicep.

Harry rubbed it sorely as they began to cut the cake up, and when he threw a look back over his shoulder to joke with Malfoy, the space behind him was empty.

Harry searched around the heads and couldn't find him anywhere. Ron shoved a plateful of cake into his hand and then he was absorbed up into the celebratory atmosphere.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"You missed out on some pretty good cake," Harry said as he stuck his head into Malfoy's office, waggling a finger.

Malfoy didn't look up at him.

"I doubt it."

Harry rolled his eyes, "It had sprinkles and frosting and all."

"Really?" Malfoy questioned disinterestedly. "Well, then, I guess that _does_ make it good cake."

Harry squared his jaw and leant against the doorframe. Malfoy flicked through a magazine slowly, each action drawn out. His eyes scanned the pages without really looking at them.

"Do you want to leave early and grab a drink?" Harry asked.

If Malfoy wasn't going to be assertive and just admit that he hated typical birthday party scenarios like he so _obviously_ did, then Harry was going to step forward for him. Besides, Harry hated the big hoopla of it all as well. Everyone was still working, anyway, and Kingsley would let him leave early without a complaint.

"Don't you want to stick around and enjoy the festivities?" Malfoy asked, his sneer coming through in his words, each word underlined with a nasty bite.

Harry inhaled deeply, the smell of potions and Malfoy – sweet and clean and foresty mingling together. "Nope," he said, "so put your robe on, put a party face on, and come get drunk with me."

Malfoy pushed his chair away from his desk, a contemplative look on his face. "Really?" he asked, unsure, hands hesitating on the robe he had slung over the backrest.

Harry laughed, airy and bright, and nodded. "It's my birthday."

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

Malfoy was weird when he was drunk. It made Harry kind of want to reinstate The Rule, and at the same time, lean forwards and kis-

Yeah, Harry was weird when he was drunk, too. They'd managed to get a private booth in the back of the bar where they could be as drunk and raucous as they wanted without other patrons shooting them nasty looks, at least.

Which was good because Harry was laughing especially loud and Malfoy was doing the _worst_ impression he'd ever seen of Hetcherson, the head of the Auror department.

Harry then went on to do his own impression of that guy in the potions office, only to realise halfway through that it was Malfoy he was impersonating. Malfoy didn't seem to care, just laughed harder at it, cheeks red and hair messy.

"Hey," Harry said around a chuckle, his lips trembling from it, "It's my _birthday_ today."

Malfoy's face became serious suddenly as he sat up straighter and moved forwards to look Harry in the eyes. "My god, it is."

Harry nodded back equally as serious. "Yeah. I'm – I'm _twenty-four_," he said in a rush.

Malfoy laughed loudly, clear and high and magnificent sounding. "You're an old man."

"Hey!" Harry said indignantly, and poked a finger into Malfoy's chest. "_You're_ older than I am."

Malfoy waved a hand about between them, as though that explained it all. Harry snorted and shook his head and took another shot. Probably not a good idea, considering how drunk he already was, but hey, it was his _birthday_.

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

They managed to leave the bar somehow and ended up back at Malfoy's house, just because it seemed natural. Harry'd slept there enough to feel at ease. Malfoy had wooden floors, though, so when they stepped out of the fireplace, Harry landed on his elbows _hard_.

Malfoy for the most part remained upright, although he did stagger a bit to the right and trip on the edge of a rug, but he caught himself in the end.

Harry dragged himself up to the couch, the effort greatly impeded by his arms' inability to properly move how he intended them to. The effort was enormous, considering Malfoy's couch was made of this material that slipped underneath his fingers. When he was mostly on it, he leaned his upper body off the edge to peer at Malfoy who was tapping his feet out experimentally, as though he might fall over if he stepped incorrectly.

"Malfoy, make me _food_," he whinged, making grabby hands. Harry was a hungry drunk. _And_ kind of a childish drunk too, although the pout wasn't a new mannerism.

Malfoy stood still for a second and didn't say a word, and then he tossed his head in Harry's direction, the move uncoordinated and messy looking, and said "Don't you think it's funny that we – that after – that we still call each other by our last names?"

Harry raised one eyebrow, except he couldn't really do it right so possibly both of his eyebrows went up, and tilted his head to the side. Malfoy had this look on his face, a mixture of hesitance and puzzlement that left his mouth slanted and off-centre.

"Draco," he said, the name foreign on his tongue, spicy sounding, "make me _food_."

Malfoy, no, _Draco_ flashed him a grin and Harry returned it eagerly.

"Oh of course, Harry, your highness," he said with a dramatic bow, finger rolling forwards with a flourish.

Harry tossed a pillow in his vague direction and then practically climbed over the back of the couch to reach the plate full of mini-quiches he'd brought out. They managed to locate another bottle of firewhiskey in one of the lavish cabinets and sloshed half of it on themselves in the process of pouring it into mildly classy glasses (that they mostly ignored, favouring the bottle instead).

.

_**o.o.o.o**_

.

"Move your head," Malf-Draco said with an urgent inflection, and Harry had only a few seconds of confusion before he'd wedged his fingers in the back of Harry's hair and ripped his head away from the toilet. Harry went to protest, but Malfoy had already stuck his head into the bowl and begun to heave.

The sight made Harry vomit a little into the back of his throat, but he was mostly done now anyway. He shuffled over so Mal-_Draco_ could get closer to the toilet, and absently patted him on the back.

That night they slept on Ma-_Draco's_ immaculate bathroom floors, the tiles cool and comforting underneath heated skin. And maybe they intertwined ankles except it wasn't as fancy and intimate sounding as that.

Ma-_Draco_, dammit, just kind of shoved his ankles underneath Harry's and mumbled something into the tiles and that was that. Really, his ankles were all bony and cold anyway, knobbly bits digging into Harry's. He didn't even like the contact that much.

Well, maybe a little.

Draco was just warm and kind of soft, okay?

Yeah, so maybe when he slung an arm over Harry's hips it was kind of nice in a way that had nothing to do with the warmth. Harry was just a sucker for physical contact, though. Yeah, that was totally all there was to it.

Harry just liked Draco's finger tickling the skin along his hip, okay?

No, wait. That wasn't right.

He liked the tickle of Draco's feathery-soft hair against his shoulder?

Ugh, that was _so_ far from right, but Harry was too tired and drunk to justify it, so he shoved his legs to the side, pressed his cold toes against Malfoy's warm ankles, and slipped into a light doze.

.

**_o.o.o.o_**

.

TBC


End file.
